Almost a year after the theater shootings in Aurora, Colo., and a half-year after the killings in Newtown, Conn., one of the things that hasn’t changed is Hollywood’s enchantment with the gun, at least when it comes to selling the big movies.
As the blockbuster film season unfolds, every major studio has firearms of one sort or another in its marketing arsenal. At Sony Pictures Entertainment, Channing Tatum clutches a sidearm the size of Wyatt Earp’s as he walks Jamie Foxx to safety on the poster for “White House Down.”
At Paramount Pictures, Brad Pitt, zombie hunter, has an even bigger piece of personal artillery slung across his back in the promotional art for “World War Z.”
Johnny Depp packs a pistol in his pants on the poster for Disney’s “The Lone Ranger.” Melissa McCarthy grips what appears to be a full-blown grenade launcher in the advertisements for 20th Century Fox’s “The Heat.”
The glowing handguns on the art for Universal’s “R.I.P.D.” have a preternatural look; but what really gets your attention are those chillingly real guns being flashed by Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, standing back to back, on the poster for the same studio’s “2 Guns.”
Hollywood loves guns because Americans love guns. It’s that simple. The media elites and anti-gun progressives on Capitol Hill have been trying to spin a tale about people all over the land who are desperate for stricter gun laws which just isn’t true. They are actually more frightened of normal, law abiding gun owners using guns frequently and safely than they are the occasional mass murderer. Why?
Because they destroy the narrative and that is all-important.
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